On Wishing You A Merry Christmas
by onewithroses
Summary: Decorating always helped Stiles before. It helped him when he woke up to Christmas boxes and so it would just have to help him again.


Christmas - that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance - a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved.

-Augusta E. Rundel

* * *

Stiles' dad turns off the air conditioning in late September and opens the windows. They stay open through the fall, which is warmer than usual and lingers. It burns the color from the leaves through November before abruptly leaving in December.

The first burst of cold creeps into Stiles' room and hits him like a punch in the gut. It doesn't even feel like Christmas ten days into December and if he only listens to the music on his phone he doesn't even have to hear carols. The sudden drop in temperature had been an unwelcomed, creeping through his still open window and causing him to wake gasping with a conspicuous wetness around his eyes.

He stumbles from his bed, feet tingling with the cold even on his bedroom carpet, and he tries to banish the thoughts that have invaded with the weather with thoughts of: _school. School. School. It's a school day._

It's not. He realizes that when he spills from his bedroom door and trips over a row of perfectly labeled, white boxes.

_Ceramic Tree 1983_._ Christmas Mugs_. _Pictures Kindergarten-Third grade_. _Christmas Ornaments_.

The C's loop to join the tops of the h's and Stiles stills, holding his breath for a moment, and thinks _Mom_.

He banishes that thought and stumble-steps around the boxes cluttering two-thirds of the hall. He braces himself with a grin that is more of a snarl as he enters the kitchen.

Which is empty, save for a carton of Orange Juice still condensating on the table.

Which makes sense when he remembers it's Saturday. His dad must have gone to the station an hour ago. The house hums with a stable silence as Stiles drums his fingers along the molding on the doorway.

The wetness at the edges of his eyes is back as a slow burn in his chest. Stiles wants to push it back. Wants to banish it into the depths of himself because _this is Christmas_ and Christmas is never supposed to be sad.

It doesn't work, but he puts everything he has into it-picking up a tree and tying it onto his jeep. He battles the knots he left the old tree lights in, organizes the ornaments, and even slaps a few snowflake decals on the windows.

Stiles does pre-emptive decorating to banish the ghosts because there are only so many bottles of aftershave and packages of socks he can buy his dad. Shopping for Scott is not much better.

* * *

"Look here, Stiles."

He's maybe five, and Christmas is the best day ever, the best holiday ever-perhaps even the best season because it stretches out from Thanksgiving and continues on to New Years with his grandpa. Nothing can beat real Christmas, though. His mom never goes to church, but she lets him go with his dad and then they stay up way late, listening for Santa on the roof.

But first they have to put the tree together and his mom pulls him round the belly to the coffee table. "Look. Look."

There are seven ornaments. Four are bulbs-round babbles or spires. The others are odd shapes like snowflakes and stars and crosses with little dates on them that he can't quite understand. Most look battered. There are chips in the paint or chips in the shapes and they don't look pretty at all. He wrinkles his nose and his mom laughs. "These are your great grandma's and your grandma's, and your granda's and your grannie's, and your pop's, and your Dad and I's first ornaments." She points at them one at a time. The bulbs are mostly from his dad's side. The shapes are the ones on his mom's. Stiles still doesn't get what the big deal is except that it's important.

She pulls out another ornament-this one is a cloth heart with a picture of him as a baby and Stiles goes shrill. "That's an _old_ picture."

And she nods, unconcerned. "And this is _your_ first ornament."

"So?"

"So?" She nudges the side of his head with her nose. "So we put these on first because they were always first."

* * *

Stiles puts on Frosty the Snowman and sets up the ornaments. As he puts up the oldest ones it feels like he's measuring out a death tally even with the children's movie flickering in his periphery. Stiles has never felt the wonder his mother did at the combined history-he follows tradition anyway. Getting the tree, putting on the lights, take a fraction of the time that putting the ornaments on does.

He does it alone because he can barely remember the order they go on anymore. He puts them on alone because he can't bare to share it. Not even with Scott.

Scott comes over because his mom is working and his dad is... well, somewhere. The air is cold and crisp and Stiles doesn't mind Scott following him home from school because Scott lets him talk and doesn't make fun of him for it-even when he loses track somewhere in the middle. They're in first grade, and it's almost Christmas.

Mrs. Kettle had them make ornaments-gifts, she said, for the holidays.

Or, well, everyone but Bobby made ornaments. Bobby made a paper dreidel made out of blue construction paper with his face from the class picture pasted on one of the sides. "I'm going to put the rest of my family on the other sides," he had explained, proud even if it was a little lopsided and didn't really spin right.

Stiles had liked it-liked it better than the silly angel faces they made with a doily. A dreidel, Bobby had explained, could be used for a game.

The only game Stiles could think of with the angels were paper dolls and paper dolls were more lame than normal dolls-which was a _lot_ (Spiderman wasn't a _doll_ Spiderman was an _action figure_). "It's just stupid."

"What is?" Scott walks beside him, lunchbox in his hand and backpack slung haphazardly from his shoulders. He keeps looking down at the lunchbox like it'll spontaneously produce more cheetos before they finish walking to Stiles' house so Stiles digs in his own pocket for his packet of half-finished cookies. They're sugar cookies, his grandma's, and the best.

And he's only sharing because they're almost home and he can get more there.

"The angels." Stiles gestures vaguely towards a row of houses, though they have nothing to do with the conversation. "You can't even do anything cool with them."

"You're just angry because Mrs. Kettle didn't let you make a Peter Parker one."

Scott has a point but Stiles isn't willing to concede. He huffs instead and Scott breaks one of the cookies in half and offers it back.

Stiles decides he can be a little forgiving. "Well, yeah. Because if anyone's an angel it'd be Peter Parker."

Stiles mom is waiting for them and she strips their heavy jackets off with a smooth practice. "How was your day?"

She plants kisses on both of their foreheads, which causes Stiles to pull another face and rub at his skin. "Stupid."

"Stupid?" She smiles, laughter lighting her voice as she twists their backpacks in her fingers and carries them into the kitchen. "Snacks first. Then homework."

Stiles whines enough for both of them and sends Scott a betrayed look when he doesn't voice agreement with his decent. _Traitor_.

While they have cookies and milk, Stiles' mom raids his backpack for forgotten permission slips, homework, and returned tests. She finds the angel crushed into one side. She takes it out and smoothes it out carefully with her fingertips-fixing the flat white wings and trying to get them to lie flat. It doesn't work, but she's smiling anyway. "Did you forget about this?"

Stiles looks up from his parade of crumbs and scowls. "No. It's just lame."

"Lame?" She shakes her head and carries the angel to the tree where she places it on the top-most branches. "No, I think it's beautiful. Who wouldn't want to see more of your face on their tree?"

Scott looks uncomfortable, sucking on his bottom lip, before he finally cuts in, "Can I be on your tree, too? We haven't-we haven't got our tree up yet."

Its almost a week until Christmas.

"You can stay on our tree as long as you want." And Stiles' mom smooths out Scott's wings, too, then puts him right next to Stiles. Scott's angel goes between homes with Scott for the entire season-until only Stiles' tree remains long after New Years. Then it stays for good so it won't be lonely.

* * *

It's seven days until Christmas. Stiles has finished decorating but hasn't finished with the hollow in his stomach. It aches when he's at home and burns every time a cold wind blows into him.

Stiles is entirely over it by the second day and frustrated to the point that writing about the history of condoms sounds appropriate for his art class test by the time it ends. His dad should be pleased-the test, at least, was on history of a sort.

On the third day he breaks and by then it's only five seconds from idea-concept to action.

Decorating always helped him before. It helped him when he woke up to Christmas boxes and so it would just have to help him again. Because he has nothing else to do and, when he takes the time to think of it seriously (and he doesn't want to, doesn't need to, because if he's feeling this bad he can only imagine how Derek's feeling), he concludes that no one else is liable to go decorating the abandoned subway station.

Which, of course, means that Stiles will have to. With a tree. And lights. And popcorn strings (even though he's never made one before it seems right, seems traditional).

And ornaments.

Which means: paper angels. Because even if Stiles thinks this plan marks him as a saint with a heart of gold that doesn't mean he isn't _also_ little shit.

Which is how Stiles ends up spending the last day before break in-between midterms-hunting down all the werewolves and weirdos of Beacon Hills High for a front-face phone photo. "Say Cheese!-Come on, think of it as practice for your mugshot."

He doesn't get a good one of Lydia, who shoves a hand into the camera as she breezes by-but that's okay because there are plenty in the yearbook. Vernon and Isaac are surprisingly easy.

And Erica's photo is downright hilarious. He's going to save the look of vague disturbed horror on his phone forever. It's turned into her caller ID.

It's only when school ends that he finally tracks down Scott and Allison. They're hiding next to an end-row of lockers like it's any cover at all. Scott turns to look at him over his shoulder and only a second later before he's herding Stiles away from Allison and back down the hall. "Dude."

"What?" Stiles waves his camera in Scott's face, though he already has more than enough photos.

"Dude. _Stop_." Scott swipes the phone out of his hand and looks like he might throw it a moment-before briskly pressing it into Stiles' hands a little harder than necessary. He glances right, then left, and leans in as though he has a secret other than not so secretly being annoyed that his make-out time has been interrupted. "I get it." His nostrils flare. "I get it, okay? We'll help."

Stiles can only assume Scott caught onto what he's doing because he's smelled like fake pine tree freshener since Monday and spent the past several Christmas either boarded up in his room or manically decorating the boys' locker room.

Jackson hadn't been impressed by last year's decorations. It might have been the mistletoe boner Stiles meticulously twisted and then had hung above his number.

* * *

Stiles' mom picks up a small ornament in the shape of a sled. It doesn't have anyone's name on it - Stiles' name is never on any of the ornaments unless she writes it on them herself - but it's small and cute. So she buys it.

Or so she explains to Stiles when he unwraps it at Christmas. "Why do you always get me an ornament?"

Stiles is six and old enough to know his mom isn't feeling well some days but young enough to not be worried-not yet. She has doctors, after all, and everyone _knows_ doctors make people better.

"Don't you like it?" She doesn't look concerned. She's picking up the wrapping paper with his dad, ankles crossed behind her while her husband holds open a trash bag for her.

"Well, yeah." Stiles squints at it. There's no location on it either. Last year they went to Florida during summer and that Christmas he had gotten a surfboard ornament that said Tampa.

"You should put it on the tree then." His dad ties the bag off and puts it to the side. "See how it hangs."

Which exposes the fatal flaw, "But it doesn't fit the theme."

His parents exchange looks and then his mother catches him in her arms. "What's our theme?"

Stiles wiggles. He's too big for hugs and cuddles-even on Christmas. "I don't know!" He escapes, stumbles two feet, and flops back down onto the carpet as though kneeling before the tree. "Which is why I can't put it up."

His mother laughs at him and catches him again, dragging him back towards her for kisses across the top of his head. "Silly. We don't have a theme. You can put it with your surfboard or dad's sunbathing santa ornament."

* * *

The only indication that Scott has said anything to anyone is the sudden arrival of Allison and Lydia on Stiles' front porch at seven pm that night. His dad is home with paperwork laid out across the kitchen table and he looks up, alarmed, when two girls in heels pad passed with two large containers of popcorn. "Hey, Mr. Stilinski."

"Uh-Hello...Allison?" It doesn't matter that Allison is Scott's girlfriend. Stiles' dad has incredulous written all over his face from the set of his eyebrows to the way his eyes bore into Stiles from over the rims of his glasses as he attempts to slip past the doorway.

He stops, cornered by the rolling gesticulating of his father who has only partially risen from his seat.

Stiles picks up enough of the shoulder rolling to summarize the main points such as: _where did these girls come from?_

Which likely doubles as _I know that's Lydia Martin. Who did you kill to have her visit_?

Stiles gestures back something that looks like a dramatic re-enactment of something between a Pimp and the Pink Panther-before grabbing a case of off-brand pop and dashing for the den.

"You do have a tree already, don't you?" Lydia has already started stringing the popcorn-deftly speering it with a needle and some thin red thread. Allison looks almost as miserable as Stiles feels as she fumbles with her own green spool of thread. Her eyes are red and raw looking, lips chapped under hastily applied lipstick.

This is her first Christmas without her mom, Stiles remembers, and his stomach churns as he remembers _I thought Scott was making out with her earlier_.

He thinks he was probably wrong.

Lydia snaps her fingers at him and Stiles tears his eyes away from the popcorn.

"No." Stiles admits. "Well. I have one here. But I don't have one-have one there. I'll get one."

Lydia clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "You better."

* * *

His dad explains what's going to happen when he's seven. He's not trying to be cruel-or at least not purposefully. He thinks it will be a kindness in the end, and maybe it was.

They go Christmas tree shopping, and it's raining cold. The tree lots puddle in the limpid night light and Stiles tries not to jump in them because he knows, just knows, it'll frustrate his dad. There's been a tremor in his hand and a crease around his brow.

Stiles thinks it's because he yelled at Ms. Clemmens (but she deserved it-she had just kept looking at him until he couldn't take it anymore and he burst) so he stays quiet and waits.

Tries to wait.

Tries not to want to run around the stacks of rolled up Christmas trees out ahead of him.

They've gone through three rows, or maybe six, when his dad kneels down in the muddy earth and Stiles feels his heart jump from his chest to his throat. _He is in so much trouble_.

Except he's not because the words that come out of his dad's mouth are worse and more broken than he's ever seen.

"Stiles," he sighs and measures the words out slowly-like they're too heavy to hold and maybe they are. "You know how your mom's sick?"

Stiles nods. He's seven years old and he's seen her be sick for almost a year.

"We're going to try everything." But everything sounds like nothing, and Stiles tenses even before his dad finishes. "But I wanted you to know-she might not get better."

Later, Stiles will understand that this was his father's way of trying to prepare him a year early. That year, he rips himself from his father's hands and rushes through the stacks of pre-cut trees - hiding behind the stacks for two hours. His father finds him curled up and red faced from the cold. He covers Stiles up in his great big brown jacket, and Stiles pretends to be asleep as he hides his face in the collar and cries.

* * *

Scott calls him two hours later from the subway station. Stiles has cement glue on over ninety-six percent of his hands and forty-seven percent of that has had some run-in or another with the doilies that he's using to make beta-and-other-people-stuck-in-weirdness angels. They look like they've been half skinned into tissue paper and Stiles can barely hear Scott over Allison laughing and Lydia promising to just make her own.

"What? Do you want to talk to Allison?" Stiles sticks a finger in his free ear and wonders if he'll ever be able to remove it again. "No, wait, hold on."

He moves towards the window and, suddenly, Scott is coming in much more clearly.

"Blue Spruce or Fraser Fir?"

Stiles buys the cheapest trees available with only an eye towards the idea that it is at least going to reach his chest. "Uh..."

"Come on, man, or Erica and Vernon are going to come to blows." Scott sounds serious and when Stiles is able to tune out the conversation going on behind him (girls. in his house) he thinks he can hear the sounds of Erica on a tear with Vernon's quiet, but persistent, intonation following.

"Just don't Charlie Brown it?" Stiles turns his eyes towards Allison and Lydia who give him questioning looks back.

"Not helping." Scott groans into the mouthpiece before charging back into the argument, not even remembering to hang up. "Look. Look. He said Blue, okay? So we'll get the Blue one."

Stiles can only wonder how Christmas Trees ever became blue. Before he can ask he hears one last cackle of glee break from Erica's throat before Scott finally remembers to hang up.

Or, at least, his pants did.

* * *

Stiles doesn't want to celebrate Christmas. Santa won't make his mom feel better (Jackson says Santa isn't real but Stiles wants to believe because believing anything else is too painful). The doctors haven't made her feel better (and he asked them to. Asked them a hundred times). His dad can't and all Stiles can do is smile and ask his dad to help him make her some tomato soup on the stove. Tomato soup always used to make her feel better when she had a bad day but nowadays it seems like more and more of it stays in the bowl.

He tries not to feel bad about it.

Because _seven_ isn't stupid. _Seven_ is being told the hard truths like that your mom might not be getting better (ever-but ever is a long time so Stiles won't believe it yet). Seven is listening through the door to your mom yell and yell and yell-and then cry when they don't bring home a Christmas Tree from the lot (and Stiles can't shake the feeling of failure-_he did this_).

Two days before Christmas, his mom wraps him up in blankets and sits on the couch with him for a marathon of stop-motion Christmas movies. "I know you're upset." She rests her chin on his head and he can feel the vibrations of her voice all over. Her hair hangs long and tickles his face. "I am, too. But I'm not done yet. I'm not, Stiles, so you're going to have to not give up, too."

He has been eating peppermint candies for over an hour and his fingers are sticky with red candy-cane dye. "I'm sorry."

"No, _I'm_ sorry." She breathes and she smells like medicine. "But I'm not sorry enough to cancel Christmas. So you're just going to have to wake me up at five am, okay? Only wake your dad up first. Jump right on his chest."

Stiles feels warm for the first time in weeks.

* * *

When Stiles finally gets around to actually going to the subway station, Allison and Lydia in tow with reams and reams of popcorn, he finds that he is two hours too late and the beta werewolves have destroyed what little sanctity the space had found in the past few months. It's a decoupage clubhouse with too much glitter and enough grime to make it feel like a mechanics' attempt at arts and crafts. There is not enough alcohol in the world for this, and Stiles tries not to stall at the doorway as he tries to swallow the damage.

The broken down couch is covered in tinsel, the tree is up-but lopsided (and totally not blue, Stiles wants to point out, it's still very much _green_), and Vernon and Scott seem to be battling over who will become most tangled in the tree lights.

Vernon is winning-but probably only because Scott is trying to inch his way out of the battle to kiss his girlfriend on the cheek.

"Well," Lydia says as she steps passed Stiles and places her box in the careful and not-at-all waiting hands of Isaac. "I can see we have a lot of work to do."

"Uh-" Isaac is staring at the popcorn like it looks like a good snack.

"Erica, help me straighten the tree." Lydia toes off her shoes, then her socks. "Allison save your boyfriend and Vernon from the lights and get ready to put them on." She spares Stiles a look that says _you owe me_. "Stiles, figure out what everyone can eat and send someone for it. Also alcohol. If you can manage that."

"Woah, woah, we're doing just fine." Vernon could almost be a Christmas tree himself with the way the white lights are wound. Lydia narrows her eyes at him.

"Let me just take care of that." Allison glides over as though nothing is wrong and extracts them from the lighting.

Stiles stares until Isaac, freed from the box of popcorn, comes at his elbow with the menus for Pizza and Chinese: werewolf meeting specials.

"I can pick it up." He offers. "I need to get something else anyway."

His eyes suggest that Lydia, even without being able to conduct a decent wolfy growl, might intimidate him. Stiles grins. "Sure. Thanks."

* * *

It's Stiles' mom's last Christmas and they pretend it isn't. She looks like a China doll and an alien and the swish of her skirt on the kitchen titles hasn't been heard in months. She, instead, stays bundled up in the living room, chiding her husband and child from the blue cushions. She doesn't even have eyelashes anymore, but her voice is firm, too quiet to be an argument but too strained to be anything else. Stiles is eight years old and he wants to shrivel up and die because it's his fault.

His fault-he and his stupid school because everyone else is bringing cookies to class. They're all bringing cookies to class and his mom's sugar cookies have always been the best because they were his grandmother's recipe and they didn't even need frosting to taste good.

But this year they haven't baked cookies. This year he's not even sure they'll be able to decorate the tree because everything is tense to breaking and he doesn't understand (but he does) because his mom is going to be fine (she's not, she's not, she hasn't been going to be better since her room started to smell like the hospital).

"I can help make cookies." Her skin is tissue and her head is wrapped with a bright red towel that makes his dad call her the "Queen of Sheba". When she first started wrapping her head the joke made her laugh. It still does-but it's stale and Stiles never really understood the joke anyway.

"I want to do it." Stiles insists, sticking his lip out stubbornly. He's been measuring out the ingredients on the dining room table so she can watch him from the couch and he thinks, if only for a moment, that if he doesn't make her move she will stay right there. Forever. Like one of the pictures on the wall-except this one will talk back and tell him _Stiles, you need to wear a warmer jacket. It's December_. "I want to make them, and then I want you to eat them."

"Well." The smile reminds him of the eggs he's laid out for cracking. "I can do that." Except she can't keep anything down and they all know that, too.

Stiles isn't good at cooking. He's never had to be. But he can follow directions and he can follow last year and the year before. He puts two spoons of batter, sans eggs, to the side and when the batter is done and the cookies are on the cookie sheets he brings the spoons over to share.

"What time and temperature?" His dad asks as he takes one of the sheets into the kitchen. He's been dragging the decorations down from the attic and is covered in dust.

"Oven's set." Stiles answers at the same time his mom says, "Twelve minutes"

When his dad comes back in a minute later Stiles screws up his face, "I didn't save you any batter."

"That's okay." He sits on one of the white boxes. It's labeled "tree lights" and Stiles is pretty sure it should cave in from his weight but doesn't say anything.

"I think you got it just right." His mom smiles around her spoon and reaches out icy fingers to run through the short trim of his hair. It's quiet for a long moment before suddenly and too soon they smell cookies.

"What temperature did you put it on again, Stiles?"

"Three-Fifty." Stiles frowns, pulling himself from her side to check-even though he knows he did it right. He checked. Twice.

"Let me go with you." Only a parent can put the cookies in and out of the oven. It's the rules and even with his mom looking translucent the rules stay.

Which is how they find out that his dad hit the Clean Oven button when he put the cookies in.

"Oh. Oh no." The oven is red with heat and the cookies have already gone passed crisp and into burning. Stiles lets out a little yell and tries to wrench the oven door off before his dad can stop him.

It doesn't move. It doesn't move because the oven is locked for cleaning and the temperature is somewhere far, far too hot.

"Let me-" He mashes the cleaning button. Then the temp-down button. The temp-up. The timer. The clock set.

"The cookies will be ruined!" Stiles almost wants to cry and wants to cry more when he hears his mother's slippered feet on the ground coming up behind them. Like her moving will break all the promises he's whispered to no one to keep her safe.

"What's happening-?"

They look back at her with a look of despair-the oven is locked and red and the cookies inside black. The smoke alarm gives a pitiful yawl from the doorway and then abruptly stops as its battery light flickers and dies. Maintenance has taken a backseat for forever-Stiles isn't sure it will ever recover.

They all turn to stare at it, then look at each other as smoke curls from the oven vents.

They laugh until they cry-and then they laugh again.

* * *

An hour later and the tree looks half-decent but the subway station still looks like an arts and crafts nightmare. They will be removing tinsel from the fixtures for a year but at least everyone looks happy for once. There's lights on the tree, popcorn strands, and a some goofy looking angels. They don't have many real ornaments, but no one seems to care too much. Erica has started making some out of balls of old newspapers-mixing the force of her rolling the paper with some glue and then spearing them with an ornament hook. Allison watches nearby-passing her colorful sheets from old magazines every so often with Scott at her side.

Derek is gone. Stiles hasn't asked where he is or why he's not here and doesn't want to know (he suspects the answer is an old burnt down house and he doesn't want to think about that anymore than he wants to think about his mother or Allison's mother). That's okay, though, because when he does come back he'll come back to a tree (and a mess) and that sort of makes it better.

Probably.

"I got pizza." Isaac comes in with a total of five boxes, and Vernon is the first up to grab one.

"No one is touching my vegetarian supreme." Vernon reminds them, as though anyone's forgotten, and camps back down at the foot of the tree.

"Don't even want it, Dude." Stiles takes two of them-a meat lovers and Hawaiian-and brings them both over towards the couch. "Take what you want."

He's a little tired-but it's a good tired-and he slumps on the ground to eat messily without a plate.

Lydia, who as far as Stiles can tell is mostly here for Allison and has been the entire time, reaches for a piece of the Hawaiian at the same time Isaac puts down the rest of the pizzas and pulls something from the pouch on his hoodie. At first Stiles thinks its a stuffed animal from childhood. It looks sort of like a shapeless blue blanket with a lot of the softness rubbed off.

It's not. When Isaac puts it on the top of the tree its more-or-less recognizable as another angel (to fit their accidental theme of awkward looking angels). "My dad-" He starts, then stops. Swallows. "He asked my aunt to make this for me. One time."

His eyes skitter over the string of bodies around the couch, landing on Erica's, then Vernon's, before he gives a shaky sort-of smile and sits down again.

Stiles doesn't say thank-you for the tree topper. They had needed one, Isaac knew that, and he didn't think the other boy would appreciate the attention.

* * *

It's her last Christmas and they haven't even put ornaments on the tree. It's two days away and Stiles doesn't care anymore but his mom does-so she has him help her lay the ornaments on the coffee table in careful rows. There are the first ornaments. And the babbles. And the Spires. Teddy bears. A nest of cardinals. A house. A pickle. A silver pine cone. Dozens of things that spiral out in a hundred different colors.

"Stiles," she sounds like she's breathing but unless Stiles tucks himself up close he can't convince himself that it's true. "You know, some people decorate their trees with a theme."

Stiles sucks in a breath, hard, and screws his eyes shut, "Themes are stupid." He had wanted a theme two years ago. Asked his mother why they couldn't be like everyone else who decorated in red and green.

His mom nudges him, her bony shoulder to his bony chest. "Oh, I wouldn't say that." Her smile is thin but genuine.

"No, they are." Stiles would fight to the death because he's eight and saying themes are better feels like he might as well wage war on his mom.

"You do realize we have a theme though, right?" She runs her fingers through his hair, gently, and he turns his head up into her hand.

"No, we don't." The ornaments on the coffee table say it all. They don't have a color. They don't have a theme. They don't even have a typical arrangement of ornaments outside the first ones.

"We do," she insists gently. "Look at the coffee table." He looks away from her like it hurts. "What do you see?"

"_Stuff_." The word is torn from him and it hurts and so she shushes him again, dipping her clothed head against his.

"Yes." The cloth nods against his head and he can feel her fingers press harder around his sides. "But-I would call it life, you see?" He can't see her face but he images that she's smiling. "Our theme is a quilt of our lives. So you can always add to it and change it."

Stiles doesn't see how that's a theme when it's so close to ending.

* * *

It's four am before Derek even turns up. That's later than Stiles ever expected and most everyone's already fallen asleep-even Lydia who had claimed she couldn't possibly stay overnight. They've pulled old mattresses out or made subway seats into beds and Stiles only realizes he's turned up at all because Derek managed to kick his mattress on the floor as he trampled through.

Derek stares at the tree-standing just a few feet away, close enough to touch it, and doesn't move. On the couch, Scott and Allison shift-twining around each other. In the subway car, Stiles assumes Vernon and Erica are doing the same.

Stiles squints and pulls himself out of his blankets, stumbling over to him to stand beside him. Surveying what he helped tree light glows with a ring of old pizza boxes nestled are no presents. There's still too much tinsel. And it looks like someone ate a section of popcorn.

But there are handmade ornaments with all of their faces on them and there are ornaments stolen from most their homes. It's a patchwork of their lives which are, for the moment, wrapped together.

Stiles holds his breath and lets it out in a hiss. He hasn't felt his sucking Christmas wound, the one his mother left, almost all evening. He doesn't dare hope it was the same for the others but for a moment, just a moment, he thinks that maybe it was.

Maybe the memories would recede. Maybe new memories could overlay the old and be layered with the soothing lie that things would get better.

Derek breathes beside him as the sky outside turns gray.

It is enough.


End file.
